FICON Administrator's Guide v6.4.0 (53-1001771-01, June 2010)

FICON Administrator’s Guide 21

53-1001771-01

FICON and FICON CUP in Virtual Fabrics

There are three different addressing modes to provide extended functionality in dynamically

created partitions. These are:

• Fixed addressing mode

• Flat addressing mode

• Auto addressing mode

Because flat addressing mode allocates 10-bit areas by default, auto-addressing mode is used to

support FICON in dynamically created partitions. Use the fabric parameters of the configure

command to enable this mode. There are two options for 256 area limit. The example of port

addresses assigned in increasing order is option 1. Port addresses in option 2 will always equal the

physical port area.

Example of the configure command

Enable a 256 Area Limit: (0..1) [1]

In this mode, the area field of the PID is allocated dynamically to the F_, FL_, EX_, and E_Ports up

to a maximum of 256 areas.

As ports are assigned to the logical switch, they are assigned port addresses in an increasing

manner. The port address numbering can be explicitly specified using the portAddress command,

switch:admin> portaddress --bind s/p 16-bit-PID --auto 1

NOTE

The portAddress --bind command is not supported with the portSwap command.

In the auto-addressing mode, this command will use only the high order 8-bits of the 16-bit area

field in the PID address that is specified in the portAddress command. For example, the following

command:

switch:admin> portaddress --bind 12/28 0200 –auto 1

will result in a port that appears as:

Index Slot Port Address

========================

252 12 28 3e0200

Port addresses that have not been assigned to a logical switch will appear as “uninstalled” in the

PIB’s Port Descriptor.

For FICON CUP, FMS mode is enabled on the logical switch and not the chassis. For example, in a

Virtual Fabric environment on the Brocade 5100 switch and the Brocade DCX and DCX-4S, one

would set CUP on each logical switch (currently limited to 2 logical switches per chassis).